Typography I Project 4: Personal Creation

And just like that, we approach the end of the first semester and first typography module. It’s been a crazy journey and I had to carefully weigh out my options before deciding which project I wanted to expand on for my final assignment. After thinking about it, I decided to do narrative photography with an accompanying prose that would incorporate typography rules to fully convey emotion.

For a start, I had to come up with a short-story / prose that my typography and photography would be inspired by. Following the creation of my zine done in Year 1 where I shared a personal story of heartbreak, I wanted to continue the story (that was in sync with my personal journey of healing ) and talk about something that I’ve been feeling for awhile: the feeling of alienation in a home and rejecting spaces because of the memories attached to them.

I sat down one Saturday, plugged in to my favourite sentimental (emo) songs and poured my heart out. It was emotional session that left me in tears to say the least. As I wrote, I decided that I didn’t want my words to rhyme too much like a poem but instead I wanted to incite thoughts through personifying my room at home. This was the outcome:

By giving character to the walls in my room / house, I managed to create a narrative that I felt gave a clear picture of the state I am in.

The next step was translating them into layouts and spreads. I aligned my text based on the flow of my story. To explain it concisely, I took notice to:

More structured paragraph placements at the start
Gradual dispersal and more space between text units as the story reached the climax
Opposing structures by the end of the story
Conscious altering of only leading, kerning and negative space. (no alterations of scale, form and opacity

The reason behind #4 is because I strongly believe typography need not be literal representations of words. As such, I want reader to feel the narrative through the image and text.

My next task required me to take photos that would complement the narrative. In the beginning, I had the concept of going around my hall (NTU Hall 2) to take photographs simply because I wanted amplify my feeling of alienation by portraying walls / a home that was not even mine. I wanted to push the idea of how I surround myself now with a different setting but try to make myself a home within it anyway. The first batch of photos were sadly very uninspiring:

I reflected after my first shoot and reasoned with myself that perhaps I was having trouble visualising interesting frames because I was too familiar with my hall’s surroundings. On the next day, a rainy, cloudy Monday, I decided to venture out to Hall 1. Just next door to mine, I was suddenly very inspired and finally got excited by what I was seeing and shooting.

My artistic vision behind the photo series stemmed from the a few basic rules I set for myself:

Elimination of objects or external motifs that were present on the walls
An exploration on shapes, shades and tones and texture
An overall cohesive colour scheme / colour grading during post-processing

I put these rules in place to ensure that the images didn’t fight for too much attention from the text and its typography.

This was my first layout of text and image:

After the first consultation, I made some changes. For example, I edited the shape of the die cut on the front cover. I wanted the text to be more immersive and I also took the advice of my tutor to make the margins bigger to support the die cut more. I also stretched out the picture on the second spread. Other changes included changing the space between the different parts of the story to further invoke more meaning.

Another challenge I faced before print was figuring out that I had designed too little pages. Forgetting the rule where saddle-stitched booklets needed to have a number of pages divisible by 4, my existing book had only 22 pages. Because of this, the pagination didn’t add up and I had to add on 2 more pages.

It was a blessing in disguise however because now I had extra space before my story started to add something. As I wasn’t about to add a liner that “dedicated” this book / photo series to anyone (much less my ex), I decided to add a quote that fir perfectly as a primer and interlude before my own prose. The quote was by author Han Suyin, which you will see below in my final layout.

This is my final layout with all changes and suggestions by my tutor added in:

Four Walls (Small PDF)

Before proceeding to print it on quality paper, I did a black and white test print to ensure that the point size was suitable and pagination was correct.

I was super satisfied with how everything turned out and was confident to carry on with the printing.

Before printing, I decided to come up with a sleeve for my book to tie everything together. I had toyed with the idea of making posters or postcards to accompany my book but after considering it, I realised that they were merely afterthoughts and did not add anything to my concept and artwork. I wanted to further amplify my four wall-ed narrative and after coming across this image on Pinterest, I was inspired and decided to make my own keyline and layout:

I was very pleased with the result but the challenge was finding a store that would print my very long single-sided print in A0. At last I found the suitable printers that would print all my collaterals and I also bought 3 different types of papers of varying whites to print on.

Reflections

All in all, I am very happy with the outcome of my project. I was happy that I followed my heart and did not use a typography style that I didn’t personally like. I was also thankful that I managed to merge my two passions together and create a body of work that I am very proud of. Truly, typography is a powerful tool to convey emotions and factoring the read-pause-read effect into the design was crucial in helping the whole design make sense.

Typography I – Project 2B – Organic Type

I wasn’t expecting Project 2B to be as challenging at first but nevertheless, here’s my process on how I manage to come up with my layout.

First up, I chose my quote “CHAOS MADE HIM BEAUTIFUL”, a quote that was a shortened and edited from the original “HER CHAOS MADE HER BEAUTIFUL”. To start off, I wanted a chaotic style of organic type for the first word in the quote. When I thought of chaos I thought of images like pain and fire was the first medium I tried using.

Risking the safety of my neighbours, I brought my set-up of a lighter and satay stick to try to burn letters into my paper.

Controlling the burn marks were not easy as sometimes too much would catch fire. After about 2 hours this was the final result:

All in all, I like the effect but was not satisfied with the clarity of the letter. Legibility was of utmost importance to me. I then shifted gears towards sort of a stencil system. I cut out hand-written font and proceeded to seal them into sticky tape.

I wanted to create a laminate to protect my letters as I had ideas of exploring with paint and as such I did not want my paper letters to soak through or break.

I mixed black acrylic paint with varying amounts of water and proceeded to add some of the mixture onto my letters. I then dragged the letters on my paper to create my typography. After creating the back strokes, I put a thicker layer of paint onto my letters and pressed to create just a bit more definition.

I was finally satisfied with my first font. Moving on to the next word, I wanted something simple but still organic. Looking around y desk, I found an eraser that later turned into my “letterpress”. Wrapping a plastic bag around it for protection, I proceeded to use strips of paper to block off parts I did not want to stamp and this was the result:

Here’s a closer look at the effect using gold paint:

After adding one last handwritten font and scanning everything in, this is the layout I came up with:

After consulting with Shirley, I decided to put this on a makeup bag/case for my application. Here’s some of the behind-the-scenes shots of my photography setup

With this image, I Photoshop-ed my organic type on

To fully put the whole concept together and answer why chaos made him beautiful. I decided to think of my product as a drag makeup kit targetted at men. I also went ahead to create a print ad for Chaos Beauty, a fictional makeup brand for drag queens.

All in all, I think this was an important project in reminding us of the beauty of hand-made fonts and not relying completely on digital programs and means for creating type. Indeed, each project was a unique expression and execution. Looking at the final applications just reinforced how hand-made font will never go out of style and still remains relevant.

Typography I – Project 2A – Vernacular Type

For our vernacular type assignment we were asked to go to a specific location and capture a quote that embodied the location. The quote I picked was “COOLER THAN YOU” and I chose Haji Lane as I feel that it’s a place where a lot of hipsters hang out at and they all have a similar mindset. Around the area are boutique / blog shops and cute cafés and to me they epitomise the cool lifestyle.

Upon reaching Haji Lane I noticed a back alley that had many elements like pipes, electrical wires and a variety of grills and gates. I immediately got inspired and starting seeing all the alphabets I needed to find. I was also happy that I found the location as back alleys are somewhere hipsters love taking photos at to get that vintage deconstructed look. Having everything from one location all shot on one day also ensured I got a consistent and cohesive look to my final piece.

Below are my first drafts to find a layout I liked:

I added on a filter to create that film camera look complete with a light leak to push the concept and theme further.

After coming up with my first draft, Shirley did comment that some of the letters werent clear enough especially the ‘Y’ in ‘YOU’. Most of the other letters required a tighter crop so viewers would not be distracted by whatever was around.

After re-shooting and making my necessary edits, here is my final layout:

All in all, I feel this exercise was an interesting and fun one and the type and words each of us discovered were really unique as no one sees the same thing in the same way.

Stay tuned for my Organic Type process post 🙂